


event horizon

by oryx



Category: Kamen Rider Build
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-15
Updated: 2018-09-15
Packaged: 2019-07-12 19:17:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16001603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oryx/pseuds/oryx
Summary: A few inexplicable moments, in an otherwise simple life.





	event horizon

One morning, he looks in the mirror and thinks:  _This face is not mine anymore._  
   
He thinks it with weary certainty. A sad, undeniable truth. It simply doesn’t belong to him. It hasn’t for a long while.  
   
A minute later and the thought fades as quick as it came, lifting from his mind like a shroud being pulled away, and he stares back at his reflection in wide-eyed confusion. Lifts a hand to touch his cheek, which feels no different than usual.  
   
Grogginess does strange things to a person, he supposes, and reaches for his aftershave with a shake of his head.  
   
  
   
  
   
He’s found himself making too much food, lately, during the hours when the café is closed. Preparing meals meant for five or six rather than only two. Setting out coffee at the counter for people who aren’t there to drink it. Misora keeps scolding him for it. A waste of ingredients, she says, crossing her arms and giving him one of those trademark frowns. We aren’t made of money, dad. You’re only forty, you shouldn’t be getting forgetful yet.  
   
“Sorry, sorry,” he always says, clapping his hands together in contrition, and yet the day after next, in the early morning before the café has opened, he finds himself with four cups of coffee again.  
   
  
   
  
   
It’s the middle of the afternoon when he catches Misora sleeping. Knocks on her door and receives no answer; pushes it open to see her flat on her back and eerily still, hands at her sides, her breathing slow and deep.  
   
Immediately, a terrible fear constricts his heart.  
   
“Misora,” he says, his voice getting drowned out by his pulse in his ears. Louder, then: “Misora!”  
   
He runs to her bedside to shake her by the shoulder. His fingers are trembling. He can’t –  
   
Her face scrunches up before she opens her eyes to blink up at him blearily, a muzzy noise of annoyance low in the back of her throat.  
   
“What?” she groans.  
   
He stops. Pulls his hand back slowly. “I,” he says, his voice small. His heart is still pounding. “I thought you were asleep again.”  
   
She gives him a baffled look. “Yeah, I  _was_ ,” she says. “I had a headache, so I was resting. Like people do. Geez, dad. I was having a dream, too.” A pause, and a troubled sort of emotion flickers across her face. “Now I can’t remember any of it.”  
   
She grumbles something under her breath, grabbing her pillow and readjusting it as she turns her back to him, leaving him standing there feeling strange and shaken, panic ebbing away bit by bit into confusion.  
   
Why had he done that? Suddenly he can’t recall.  
   
  
   
  
   
He became a fan of Lynks after seeing a performance on television.  
   
“You really like this?” Misora had asked, laughing, when he’d come home the next day with their newest CD and a poster for the wall of the café. “You, who’s been listening to nothing but Nagabuchi Tsuyoshi and weird old jazz for like twenty years?”  
   
“Of course,” he’d said, defensive. “This is what the young people are into, right? It’s good to expand your interests.”  
   
Truth be told, the music itself is all a little loud and off-kilter for his tastes.  
   
But there’s something about the lead singer’s voice, his face, that’s so comfortingly appealing in a way he can’t place.  
   
  
   
  
   
“Dad,” Misora says. She’s stirring her bowl of soup with a faraway look in her eyes, chewing on her lip in that way she does whenever a sad thought has struck her. “Do you ever regret quitting being an astronaut? I mean. It was your dream, wasn’t it?”  
   
He pauses in his glass-polishing to hum thoughtfully. “It  _was_  my dream,” he says with a gentle smile. “But this place is my dream now. And you’re my dream, too. So it’s fine.”  
   
“Yeah, but,” she protests, and then goes quiet again. “Can any of this really compare to – to being out in space? I can’t imagine. Giving up on seeing things like that, just for this.”  
   
He thinks back on it often, he can’t deny. Dreams of it, even. Of looking out those windows and seeing the expanse of stars against the endless black, of seeing Earth in miniature laid out below. He can still remember, ten years later, the exact pattern of the clouds against the greens and blues.  
   
He can still recall in perfect detail the landscape of Mars. The looming silence of it around him. The way his footsteps had felt against the red soil.  
   
And below the surface of all these memories is a feeling of unspeakable dread.  
   
He doesn’t know why. He’d been lucky, he knows. Nothing had ever gone seriously wrong on his missions. (Not every astronaut is so fortunate.) But it’s there all the same: the paralyzing, gripping terror whenever he dwells too much on those days. The sense that something terrible was lying in wait out there, in the space between the stars, and that he only just missed it.  
   
When he’d submitted his resignation he’d cited health issues, unsure of how to put into words this baseless emotion.  
   
“You're right. It can’t compare,” he says finally, and reaches over to ruffle Misora’s hair, just to watch her indignant smile as she tries to swat him away. “But maybe that’s a good thing.”  
   
  
   
  
   
Sato Taro comes back to Nascita a few weeks later.  
   
“You know… You’re a bit different than you are on television,” Soichi says. “Has anyone ever told you that?”  
   
Sato looks at him with wide, dark eyes from across the counter. His expression softens a moment later, a wistful smile curving his mouth. “I’ve heard something like that a few times, yeah.”  
   
“Ah, sorry if it’s a touchy subject. The entertainment industry is pretty tough, I’m sure. Makes sense to keep your private life separate.” He leans over the latte that Sato had ordered, brow furrowing as he adds the finishing touches. When he slides it over to him, Sato stares down at it in somewhat worrying silence.  
   
“I’ve been trying out latte art, lately,” Soichi explains. “I’ve heard it’s popular at the big name cafés. Is it no good?”  
   
Sato swallows visibly. Shakes his head. “It’s nice,” he says. “But. Why a rabbit?”  
   
“Oh, it’s my daughter’s favorite animal,” Soichi laughs. “And… It just seemed right for you, I suppose. Do you like them, too?”  
   
Sato’s eyes seem strangely glassy. “They’re alright,” he says, voice hoarse, but even so he seems reluctant to ruin the artwork, taking out his phone and snapping a picture, as if it were something worth remembering forever.


End file.
